As someone who had to work in a design shop victimized by patent trolls, I can testify that it cramped productivity and innovation. Trolls attempted to sue us us for using common HTML code, like hyper-linked text. It was basically a mob shakedown ethically no different from a scene in the Sopranos, except it’s endorsed by our legal system.

It has nothing to doing with protecting ideas, patent is not an invention. The episode of “This American Life” very accurately describes the problem and shines a light on the ethically corrupt companies and individuals behind these actions.

All they proved is they know nothing about patents. A patent’s title or summary does not state what it covers.

“Patent troll”

Call it what you will…patent hoarder, patent troll, non-practicing entity, etc. It all means one thing: “we’re using your invention and we’re not going to pay”. This is just dissembling by large infringers to kill any inventor support system. It is purely about legalizing theft.

Prior to eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions. If the defendant was found guilty, an injunction was most always issued. Then the inventor small entity could enjoy the exclusive use of his invention in commercializing it. Unfortunately, injunctions are often no longer available to small entity inventors because of the Supreme Court decision so we have no fair chance to compete with much larger entities who are now free to use our inventions. Essentially, large infringers now have your gun and all the bullets. Worse yet, inability to commercialize means those same small entities will not be hiring new employees to roll out their products and services. And now some of those same parties who killed injunctions for small entities and thus blocked their chance at commercializing now complain that small entity inventors are not commercializing. They created the problem and now they want to blame small entities for it. What dissembling! If you don’t like this state of affairs (your unemployment is running out), tell your Congress member. Then maybe we can get some sense back in the patent system with injunctions fully enforceable on all infringers by all inventors, large and small.